They’re lying to us too?” But my friend had a point. Like maybe “ Forget the government, but what about the dozens of our homies who are either MDs or science-related PhDs? People we know and love who know more about this stuff than we do. There are things you could’ve said, sure. And then they said, “You, a Black American, are asking me, a Black American, to trust the government, and I’m the silly one?” And then you had nothing to say. And they responded with something about how they don’t trust the government.
They saved your life after you almost ended theirs.Īnd what if they stumped you once? Like that time in the spring you tried to convince them to get a vaccine. And that grace stopped you from ever doing it again. Drinking too much, and driving sometimes after drinking too much. But you blacked out - the memory of the drive escaped your body and still hasn’t returned. Like someone just bought them a Fisher-Price: My First Freedoms toy set for Christmas.īut how do you dread the most empathetic person you know? The person who’d let you drag them out of an exam cram session to roll with you to the club on a damn Wednesday, because they know you just had a breakup and want to get back out there and have too much anxiety, too much fear, too much I-can’t-go-there-’cause-what-if-she’s-there to go solo? What if it’s the same person who called on your birthday to tell you how proud they are of you because that’s what they always do? Even if your previous conversation wasn’t quite a conversation, more like you telling them they sound like a QAnon parrot and them responding with a bunch of stuff about “The Gates Foundation” and “dark interests in medicine.” And then you wondering, for the first time, if that’s the last time you’ll speak? What if you almost killed them on their birthday 10 years ago? You had too much to drink, and they got in the car with you after you told them you were “straight.” You made it to where you wanted to go, sure. Sometimes it’s just some goofy-ass understanding of citizenship. Sometimes it’s a white-nationalist-adjacent libertarianism. Sometimes it’s a skepticism of modern science. These are more like sinkholes.) The precipice is usually the empathy void these people seem to possess, where they’re prioritizing their own politics over other people’s health. I’ve read tweets and Facebook status messages and news stories from and about people who’ve dreaded contact with their friends and family members who’ve tumbled down covid-19 conspiracy “rabbit holes.” (Also, I don’t quite think “rabbit hole” is the right word here, because at least you see those coming, and they’re built for a good reason.